LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 811, 27 January 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HER LAST APPEARANCE.

i ( Concluded.) The fiddlers began the overture to Artaxerxes. Philip Hazlemere’s heart beat loud and fast. H e longed for the rising of the curtain with an over-mastering impatience. It was more than a week since he had seen | Barbara Stowell; and what a potent change | in both their destinies had befallen since I their last meeting ! He could look at her I now with triumphant delight. No fatal | barrier rose between them. He had no 5 doubt of her love, or of her glad consent to | his prayer. In a little while—just a docent J interval for the satisfaction of the world—j she would be his wife. The town would see i her no more under these garish lights of the ' theatre. She would shine as a star still, but | only in the calm heaven of home. I The brightness of the picture dispelled jj those gloomy fancies which the half-empty | theatre and its dark mantle of fog had en- | gendered. | The curtain rose, and at last he saw her. |j The lovely eyes were more brilliant than \ ever, and blinded him to the hollowness of \ the wan cheek. There was a thrilling | tragedy in her every look which seemed the | very breath and fire of genins. The crea--1 ture standing there, pouring out her story |of suffering, was wronged, oppressed; the j innocent, helpless victim of hard and bloody | men. The strange story, the strange charac- ; ter, seemed natural as she interpreted it. I Sir Philip listened with all his soul in his ( cars, as if he had never seen the gloomy j play before—yet every line was familiar to i him. The Duchess was one of Barbara’s | greatest characters. I He hung with rapt attention on every I word, and devoured her pale loveliness with * his eyes, yet was eager for the play to be | over. He meant to lie in wait for her at the j stage door, and accompany her to her < lodgings, and stay with her just long enough ; to speak of their happy future, and to win | her promise to bo his wife as soon as her weeds could be laid aside. He would respect I even idle prejudices for her sake, and wait ! for her while she went through the ceremony of mourning for the husband who had illused her. The play dragged its slow length along to the awful fourth act, with its accumulated horrors— the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the dirge, the executioners with coffin and cords. Barbara looked pale and shadowy as a spirit, a creature already escaped from earthly bondage, for whom death could have no terrors. Thinly as the house was occupied, the curtain fell amidst a storm of applause. Sir Philip stood looking at the dark-green blankness—as if that dying look of hers had rooted him to the spot—while the audience hurried out of the theatre, uneasy as to the possibility of hackney-coachcs or protecting link-boys to guide them through the gloom. He turned suddenly at the sound of a sigh close behind him —a faint and mournful sigh—which startled and chilled him. Barbara was standing there, in the dress she had worn in that last scena—the shroudliko drapery, which had so painfully reminded him of death. She stretched out her han,ds him with a sad appealing gesture. He leaned eagerly forward and tried to clasp them in his own, but she withdrew herself from him with a shiver, and stood, shadow-like, in the shadow of tha doorway.

‘ Dearest 1 ’ ho exclaimed, between surprise and delight, ‘ I was coming round to the stage door. lam most impatient to talk to you, to be assured of your love, now that you are free to make me the most blessed of men. My love, I have a world of sweet words to say to you. I may come, may I no? ? I may ride home with you in your coach ?’

The lights went out suddenly while he was talking to her, breathless in his eagerness. She gave one more faint sigh, half pathetic, half tender, and left him. She had not blessed him with a word, but he took this gentle silence to mean consent. He groped his way out of tho dark theatre, and went round to the stage door. He did not present himself at that entrance, but waited discreetly on the opposite side of the narrow street till Barbara’s coach should bo called. He had watched for her thus, in a futile aimless manner, on many previous nights, and was familiar with her habits.

There were a couple of hackney coaches waiting in the street under the curtain of fog. Presently a link-boy came hurriedly along with his flaring torch, followed by a breathless gentleman in a brown coat and wig of the same color. The link-boy crossed the road, and the gentleman after him, and both vanished within the theatre.

Sir Philip wondered idly what the breathless gentleman’s business could be. He waited a long time, as it appeared to his impatience and still there was no call for Mrs Stowell’s hackney coach. A group of actors came out, and walked away on the opposite pavement, talking intently. The gentleman in brown came out again, and trotted off into the fog, still under the guidance of the link-boy. The stage doorkeeper appeared on the threshold, looked up and down the street, and seemed about to extinguish his dim oil lamp and close his door for the night. Sir Philip Hazlemere ran across the street just in time to stop him, * Why are you shutting up ?’ he asked ; ‘ Mrs Stowell has not left the theatre, has she ?’ It seemed just possible that he had missed her in the fog. ‘ No, poor thing, she won’t go out till tomorrow ; and then she’ll be carried out feetforemost, ’ ‘ Great God ! what do you mean ?’ ‘lt’s a sad ending for such a pretty creature,’ said the door-keeper with a sigh, ‘and it was that brute’s ill usage was at the bottom of it. She’s been sickening of a consumption for the last three months—we all of us knew it—and when she came in at this door to-night I said she looked fitter for her coffin than for the stage. And the curtain was no sooner down than she dropped all of a heap, with one narrow streak of dark blood oozing out of her lips and trickling down her white gown. She was gone before they could carry her to her dressingroom, They sent for Dr Budd, of Henrietta street. But it was too late. She didn’t wait for the doctors to help her out of this world.’

Yes, at the moment when he had looked into that shadow face, seen those sad eyes looking into his with ineffable love and pity, Barbara’s troubled soul had winged its flight skyward.